


with fate unyielding

by laskaris



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Game Spoilers, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:10:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5939967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laskaris/pseuds/laskaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Mikleo never says a word to Sorey about the ancient history in his blood.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Roses, thorns, unyielding fate, and a white dress that never stains, no matter how much blood there is.  A sword and the promise of a wish to change the world. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>An extremely vaguely <i>Revolutionary Girl Utena</i>-flavored AU.  character and pairing tags subject to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bargains we made with fate unyielding

**Author's Note:**

> \- emphasis on EXTREMELY VAGUELY flavored Utena AU. While this is much tamer in a lot of respects than Utena itself was, there's still some shit in here (esp. given the Rose Bride's everything), so if I need to change the warning tags, I will.  
> \- I'm still working on _to where the water was_ , it's just been slow. current chapter is progressing through, and updates for that will come faster than this because I actually have more of a plan.  
> \- updates on everything will be slow, I'm writing my senior thesis this semester.

_(As she is dying, a young woman tells her young son a story, and iron blood is copper-bright against her lips, and he holds her iron-pierced hands tightly, violet eyes wide.)_

Once upon a time, there lived a brother and a sister, a long time ago., and maybe they could have been happy, except fate chose the brother to take on the weight of the world’s sins, to bear that weight and keep the world in balance, giving him the power of gods in exchange. he was young, too young, and suffered greatly for years untold, until he broke beneath the burden. a shattered man who could not, would not, ever be whole, but still he held on, because there was nothing else to be done. 

His sister watched her brother suffer and could do nothing, for years untold, except take care of him. make sure that he ate, hold him when he wept, and wipe away the blood, even as she lay awake at night in her bed across the room listening to the invisible blades of each sin pierce his flesh. invisible, eternal, ceaseless. How was this _fair?_

“Let me share his burden,” she demanded of the heart of the world, and even if she’d known what would happen next, about how her brother could suffer infinitely when it was just him but unable to bear the thought of her sharing his fate, she would still make the same choice, so he wouldn’t always have to suffer alone. “Give _me_ the sins of this world to bear. Isn’t it enough for my brother to keep the world in balance?” 

Her brother comes home to find her pinned to the wall by invisible blades, and she tries to smile at him through iron blood and coughs weakly instead. he stares at her with wide, stricken purple eyes, even as the dull thud of swords through her flesh echoes wetly through the room. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. 

“This wasn’t your burden to bear, sister,” he gasps, hands shaking as he tries to get her down. 

“I chose this,” she says, falling limply into his arms, and the sudden weight of her nearly knocks him flat to the ground before he manages to stand up again, carry her with infinite tenderness to her favorite chair and setting her down in it as if she’s made of glass. She coughs, rasping and deep, and holds her palm against her mouth to hide the blood.“To share it with you. It wasn’t fair of fate to make you bear it alone.” 

Her brother’s pained smile is utterly _shattered._ “None of this was fair,” he murmurs, and strokes her hair as if they were children again, like they hadn’t been for centuries upon centuries. “But I’ll make this right. I promise.” 

Her brother dies trying to shatter fate with the power he had been given, but even the power of gods cannot stand against what binds the world and everything in it, everything that was and is and will ever be: he dies slow and choking, drowning in roses and hung on a hedge, while thorns fill his eyes, his lungs, tear at his flesh, pierce through his hands, while she screams and screams and screams. he dies bleeding, but as slow and lingering his death was, he was the lucky one. 

The girl, who had become a young woman but stayed the same after that, for years beyond counting, had always known fate to be vicious since the day it had chosen her brother to bear the sins of all the world as invisible blades piercing his flesh for all the rest of his days. Fate punished her worse, because her brother had loved her enough to defy what it had written for him for her sake, and fate is never kind to love and those who are beloved. 

Fate dressed her in white and red, crowned her in roses and made of her a sacrifice for more years then she knew how to count, set a trap for would-be heroes and those who sought power, forged the power they had given her brother into a sword, a blade that held all the power of the gods, and set them fighting each other. Made her into a vessel for a power she could not wield, into a bride, into an object to win with no power of her own, passed from victor to victor, even as fate dangled promises of a wish, the power to change the world. Promises that were never fulfilled, even as she clenched her fists and wept, and all the while her heart was pierced by the swords of the world’s sins, invisible and eternal. 

Once, her roses were white, but all the blood they drank turned them red. 

_(“I’m sorry, my little love.” Muse whispers, strokes her son’s hair with shaking, bleeding hands, adjusts the circlet she gave him for his birthday. She has been a sacrifice for more years than she remembers, but only now does she realize the extent of their true punishment. She and Michael had both made their choices, so very long ago, but she hadn’t realized just how deep fate’s hate for them ran until the moment she had first held her baby in her arms, looked into his eyes, and realized just how he was doomed. That whenever she died, because fate hated her enough to ensure it would happen, that he would become the Rose Bride in her place simply because he was her child and Michael’s nephew, shared their thrice-cursed blood. “I’m so sorry.”_

_“Mama?” Mikleo asks, and she squeezes his hand so tightly._

_She can hold on just long enough, she thinks. Just long enough, the space of a few more years, and she smiles through iron blood when her son brings home his friend with the green eyes, the two of them laughing over some ancient history or another, though Mikleo never says a word to Sorey about the ancient history in his blood. She holds on as long as she can, slow drowned and dying, and-)_

It’s raining, in the maze of her roses, when Muse finally dies, dressed in white and crowned with roses, and she’s too tired to be angry that she’s dying as the Rose Bride and not as herself. Mikleo bursts onto the dueling ground though she’s never told him where to go, shoves aside a fox-faced, blond man she’s always disliked and never wanted near him, is at her side in a moment, and she has just enough strength left to grasp his hands. 

“Mother?” Mikleo asks, tears clinging to his long lashes, and in that moment, she would have given anything, anything, anything and everything at all, to spare him this but unyielding fate will make no more bargains with her, holds his hands tighter and smears blood against his skin. Already, she can see him changing as he kneels with her in this place outside time: rose petals in his lengthening hair, white cloth pooling around his legs. 

“Please be strong,” she says, and tries to smile, for him, and remind him that he is loved. A light to carry with him, into darkness and thorns and a white dress that never stains, no matter how much blood there is. “I love you.”

Muse closes her eyes and dies bleeding amidst the roses, and the last things she hears are the hollow thud of an invisible sword striking home and her son’s pained scream. 


	2. rose bride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The Rose Bride is not a mindless doll, Mikleo.” your mother says, her eyes fixed on yours. “No matter what others may choose to believe of us, or might try to make of us._
> 
> Mikleo hates keeping secrets from his best friend, but the burdens of the Rose Bride are best to be borne alone. He's lost too much already, and he won't let Sorey die bleeding among the roses. 
> 
> But Sorey makes things even more complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- if I missed any content tags that should be tagged for, please let me know.

_“The Rose Bride is not a mindless doll, Mikleo.” your mother says, her eyes fixed on yours. “No matter what others may choose to believe of us, or might try to make of us.”_

_Her iron-pierced hands, too-slender and wasted with her lingering illness, squeeze yours tight. In your waking memory, your mother’s lips move, her words too soft to be heard, but in your dreams, two years after her death, her gentle voice rings clear as a bell._

_“Never make it easy for them.”_

_***_

You wake up, as always, in agony, and bury your head in your pillow to muffle your coughing, dimly hoping that at least you won’t cough up blood all over the pillowcase this time. _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk._ The hollow sounds of metal piercing flesh, piercing bone, echo loudly in the room, and for a moment, your breath catches in your throat, afraid. Did Sorey hear _this_ time? 

_(you’re sure he hasn’t. you’ve never told him about the ancient history in your blood, never told him about your fate, about roses and thorns and blades and the wedding dress you never, ever wanted to wear, and most of all, never told him about the duels, keep the veil drawn over his eyes with all your power-)_

“Mikleo? Are you okay?” Sorey asks, peering down at you, and his green eyes are concerned. You hadn’t been this sick, as far as he’d known, the last time he’d seen you before your mother had died and you’d become the Rose Bride in her place. 

“I’m fine,” you tell him, all over again, and try to make yourself convincing, because you’re tired of worrying him. Two years without him had been miserable, with only the occasional letters and emails you’d managed to write him, brief phone calls, and threaded throughout had been him asking if he could visit you, or if you could visit him, and you’d almost cried having to turn him down with no explanation. You couldn’t leave this school’s grounds, not anymore, not like when you were children, when you lived here with your mother and Sorey’s mother, your mother’s best friend, had brought him with her when she’d come to visit your mother. Not like when you were still free to leave the grounds, to tumble down hills and explore the forgotten places together: now you are the Rose Bride, and this place is your prison. And you wouldn’t have him come _here_ , even for a visit, now that there’s a risk of him becoming tangled. 

_(and then he’d ended up here, anyway, as a student, and you scowl at fate. no, fate, you can’t have him-)_

“Worry about yourself,” you tell him, sharply. “You’ve got class in twenty minutes.” 

Sorey doesn’t leave your bedside until you manage to get yourself out of bed, cold and trying not to cough, managed to reassure him that you’re okay. The pain still staggers you, but you lean against the counter _behind_ Sorey, exactly where he can’t see you, until you manage to pull yourself together.

_(you hate keeping secrets from him, but this is the only way to keep him safe. your uncle died a thousand and more years before you were ever born, pierced by thorns and hanging on a hedge. your mother died in her wedding dress down among the roses. you won’t let him die in the roses, either, you won’t let him die bleeding, and the only way is to keep him free of your fate)_

***

Sorey finds you later, while you’re tending your mother’s roses: they’re yours now, technically, but you’ve never been able to think of them as anything other than her roses. In your very earliest memories of her, she was tending the ever-blooming flowers while you sat with a book at her feet, watching her. 

“Wow, these are beautiful,” he says, looking around with wide eyes and reaches out without thinking to touch one of the flowers, a still-white rose surrounded by a sea of red. You’re too slow to knock his hand away before he yelps, blood bright against the pale petals. “Ouch!” 

“Don’t touch them.” you scold him, as he sticks his finger in his mouth. “Honestly, Sorey, those are _roses_ and they have thorns. You should have expected that.”

“The petals were soft, at least.” he offers, sheepishly. “I didn’t remember you liking flowers so much before.” 

“They belonged to my mother.” you explain, and watch, frowning to yourself as the rose drinks his blood. The two of you subside into silence for a long moment: when you were children, you knew each other inside out, knew each other completely, and you didn’t need to speak to know what each other were thinking. It hasn’t been so long, and Sorey hasn’t changed that much, but you have, tangled in roses and blood: you hide the Rose Bride from him, and always will, for as long as you can. But while the silence might not be as comfortable as it had been before, it’s still a pleasant silence, Sorey’s fingers warm in yours, and you can almost ignore the constant pain. You don’t quite realize when your fingers entwined, still so natural even now, and don’t know who reached for whose hand first. 

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” you finally ask, hearing the distant bell chime the hour, and you know Sorey’s schedule even better than you know your own. Sorey shrugs, unconcerned. 

“I guess.” he says and keeps sitting for a while longer before he turns to look at you intently, smile fading and eyes serious. “Hey, Mikleo?” 

“Yeah?” you ask him, carefully. 

“If you ever need help, let me know, okay?” Sorey asks, very serious and earnest, and your heart almost stops for a second. You know he would: the first night you’d been roommates, you’d fallen out of bed coughing, had only barely been able to hide the blood before he’d woken up, and he’d nearly carried you to the doctor then and there, nevermind that a doctor wouldn’t have been able to help you. You still aren’t sure how you managed to talk him out of it. 

_(you know he’d do anything to help you, like you’d do anything to help him, but you don’t want him to die for you. and you saw how hungrily the rose drank his blood, how much fate hates your family and those who you love-)_

“I’m fine, Sorey.” you say, and feel bad for lying to him. But you don’t see any other way to protect him, when you know he’d jump in without looking, without thinking. When he’ll get himself killed. 

Sorey’s eyes linger on you for a long moment as he stands up, reluctantly letting go of your hand, and a smear of blood is invisible-bright against his tanned skin. He wears his heart on his sleeve and is the worst liar you’ve ever met, but he’s also perceptive. _(You wish you could tell him. Hope and strength and faith and purity like clear rain. Could he, would he, should he -_

_Blood on rose petals. Your mother weeping. If one of you cannot, will not, ever be whole, you would rather be the one. Hope and faith and the brightest smile you’d ever seen._

_You will not allow him to be broken by fate’s unyielding decree.)_

***

The roses, at least, will bend to your will: you weave the wall tighter against Sorey, bar him from entering the maze of roses and from ever finding his way through it. You can’t keep a duelist out of the dueling ring, but he isn’t a duelist, and you aren’t even sure that he has the kind of strong desire necessary to _become_ one. Fate draws in those with desperate, impossible wishes and dangles fulfilment just out of reach. 

As you walk further into the darkened maze of roses, the familiar changes sweep over your body: your hair lengthens, falling heavy past your waist, your bones ache with growing all over again, your clothes melt into the white silk of your wedding dress and roses are tangled in your hair. By the time you reach the center of the maze and the dueling ground at its heart, your appearance reflects what you are here: the Rose Bride, no more and no less. A prize to be won, fate’s chosen vessel for wishes it will never grant. 

( _maybe this is what you would have looked like when you were older, if you were ever able to grow up, fate making you a reflection of the future it won’t let you have. long hair, delicate ageless beauty, maybe managing to grow an inch or two.)_

You take a moment to glance over the duelists present in the arena: their wishes swirl bright in the air around them, and you pick out the very familiar ones from the group easily enough. Rose, hanging off Dezel’s neck as she shakes him: Zaveid, shrugging into the shirt that he only deigns to wear while dueling, and Edna, who still shows up to the duels despite her arm in a cast and sling, broken in three places the last time she tried to duel and her tongue sharper than ever. 

Edna frowns after a minute or two of baiting you, and you _still_ hate how you fall for it. “Oh good.” she mutters, sarcastically, just as the very tenor of the air changes, grows darker and colder, the roses anticipating blood. You don’t need her next words to know exactly who just walked in, even though you’re not facing him. “The psychopath is finally here. Who is he going to kill or maim today?” You’re grateful, at least, that even though she’s managed to dig at you about almost literally everything else in your life, she’s _never_ made any cracks about your unchosen, unwanted ‘marriage’. 

“No one, hopefully.” Rose says, dropping off Dezel’s neck and her hands settling on her hips, to the daggers behind her. “I’d prefer my limbs to stay all in one piece.” 

You let their conversation flow over and around you as you turn and step away from the group, just in time for Lunarre to step into the heart of the maze. He doesn’t waste any time with the other duelists: instead, he walks straight over to you, reaching out to rest fingers against your neck.

“Give me the sword.” Lunarre demands, his fingers cold against your skin, a promise and a threat. His wish coils cold through the air, power and immortality, and you _won_ ’ _t,_ ritually married for over a year and a half or no. There’s little enough you can defy him in, but this is the only way you can: the Rose Bride does not have to hand over the Sword, even to their ‘spouse’ outside of a duel. And this is _not_ a duel. “Now.”

“No.” you tell him, with your hand on your hip. It’s bad enough that he has near-complete power over you, but you won’t let him have the power of the gods anywhere other than the dueling ring _(and if you could, you wouldn’t let him have the sword then, either.)_ “This isn’t a duel.” 

His hand wraps around your throat, squeezing tightly, as he easily lifts you off your feet. Dimly, you can hear Rose, stepping forward and yelling something furiously, and the lower, curt sound of Dezel addressing her. You can’t focus on what they’re saying: you can’t breathe, and someone’s broken through your roses, through your wards, footsteps echoing first inside your head, then the sound of running footsteps reach your ears, and panic fills you for a moment. 

_(Not someone. You know exactly who, because you’ve only warded against one person, how did he even manage to break through them-)_

“Hey! _Put him down!”_ Sorey yells, as he skids to a stop, and this is the first time you’ve ever heard him _angry_. A momentary shiver runs down your spine, electric in your blood, even though you know that he probably doesn’t recognize you like this, not as the Rose Bride with your hair long and loose and all ageless, unnatural grace in your wedding dress. 

Lunarre grins, wide, and you hate him more as his grip tightens on your throat, your hand clawing at his futilely. You know what he’s _doing_ , and you _know_ Sorey is going to take the bait, because he never thinks things through, especially not when it comes to helping anyone. The only way he’d jump in twice as fast is if he had known that this is _you_ crowned with roses beneath the Rose Bride’s skin and you’re glad he doesn’t know. “Are you going to _make_ me? You don’t even understand what _thing_ you’re fighting for.” 

_No, no, no, don’t-_ you cannot speak, you cannot yell, but if you could have, you would have, futile as it would have been for changing Sorey’s mind. Anger fills his eyes and he jumps into the dueling circle with no weapon except the broom he’s carrying, his arms and face scored with bloody scratches. He doesn’t even have a _blade_ , and he doesn’t know the rules. “People _aren’t things.”_ this is the angriest you’ve ever heard him, so beautiful and brave, and if you thought that throwing aside what pride you had and getting down on your knees to beg Lunarre to leave Sorey _be_ , to just let him walk away from this, would have helped, you would have done it. But it _won’t:_ it’ll just amuse him briefly and Lunarre wants to kill _someone else,_ craves the blood on the dueling grounds that stopped as a regular thing long before he ever found his way through the maze of roses,and he can’t kill you, like he couldn’t kill your mother. 

_(he’ll settle for the person you love most, because killing your hope would feed him for years and because Rose hasn’t fought him yet on the dueling ground, still out of his reach.)_

“The Rose Bride isn’t a person.” Lunarre shrugs dismissively and drops you back on your feet, pulls you back against him with his hand resting on your throat, a threat meant more for Sorey than you. Your skin crawls but his will presses down on you, holding you in place, even as you curse yourself and curse your weakness. You don’t know how to work within your restrictions, not the way your mother had, and now Sorey is going to _die_ because of it, because of you. You couldn’t even keep him out of the maze of roses, you couldn’t even keep him safe. “Nothing but a false doll _pretending_ to be a person-” 

“Shut up and get on with it.” Sorey interrupts him in the middle of his sentence. “I’ve heard _more_ than enough.” 

Lunarre’s hand settles on your chest, fingers less than gentle against your skin, and _rips_ the sword free. Agony sets every nerve afire and you can’t help but shriek, ragged scream tearing itself free from your throat. There is no part of your existence as the Rose Bride that is free of pain - your mother could smile and pretend, at least in front of the duelists that vied for her hand, that she wasn’t hurting after a lifetime of agony spread across centuries without count. But you are not your mother, in more ways than one: you haven’t yet developed her patient endurance or have her strength. Even with your permission, drawing the sword from you _hurts_ , your body grown too used to the presence of the blade inside you: _without_ it, the pain is blinding. 

He lets you fall to the ground, throws you aside carelessly, and you try to struggle up, because you have something you need to do, trying to grab one of the roses that grows so abundantly. A long time ago, your mother, along with the man who ultimately held her chain as fate’s chosen vessel, worked out a system for the duels that would at least _somewhat_ protect the duelists with the roses she - and now you - give them. Blood is still spilled on the dueling ground, but it’s now a purely deliberate act, rather than accidental. 

Sorey starts towards you, concern in his eyes. “Hey, are you okay?” he asks: it’s a question that he asks without thinking, because the answer should be obvious. He holds out a hand to help you up, just as you manage to get to your feet - and just as the blade of the sword is interposed between the two of you. “I’m just trying to _help_ him!” 

“The rules are the rules.” you say, snapping a rose off the nearby hedge, thorns drinking your blood, and meet his eyes. You don’t think he recognizes you, still, though his brows are furrowing as he looks at you. “There’s nothing you can do unless you win..” And there’s no way that he can win, not without a blade. Not with a _broom_ against the Sword. You can still close this duel, this challenge, before it begins, if you can get him to go, now. You don’t have any hope of _that_ , because Sorey is stubborn and reckless and doesn’t back down. “You should go.” 

Sorey shakes his head. “If that’s the only way, there’s no other choice.” he says, and glares at Lunarre as he steps back into the dueling ring. “Let’s go.” 

And with that, the circle closes: Sorey won’t leave. Sorey won’t _leave_ , and there’s nothing more you can do to help him, to protect him, save one thing, though everything else you have done has failed. You step forward to offer him the rose, to sanction the duel - and Lunarre knocks you to the ground, crushes the rose beneath his heel. 

“Stay down there, Rose Bride.” Lunarre orders, and the unbreakable chain of his will binds you fast. After another moment, he leans down, pressing his lips against your ear, and whispers words meant only for you, before sauntering back into the dueling ring. “And you can watch your boyfriend _die.”_

“Sorey, you _idiot,”_ you whisper angrily as the two of them face off, helplessly clenching your fist and feeling the tears well up in your eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- so I thought I was going to update to where the water was first. It's mostly done with a couple of scenes left to untangle, but I spent the week doing depressing research into Romanian history for my thesis. I decided to finish the fic that had nothing to do with Slavic history at all.. Hopefully to where the water was will update within the week.   
> \- not all of this will be in second person, I swear, though Mikleo's POV chapters will probably stay second person for a while.   
> \- his appearance as the Rose Bride is obviously based on his appearance in the epilogue.


	3. IMPORTANT NOTICE

You all might have already guessed from how long it's been since any of my fics have updated, but I'm very sorry to say that this and _to where the water was_ are on indefinite hiatus. I've started grad school and a Ph.D program, and I would rather use my limited time to work on my tabletop fanfic and original work. So I'm taking a step back from Tales fandom in general. 

Thank you guys for enjoying what I've done. Maybe someday I'll find the drive to update again, but I cannot and will not promise any kind of regular updates.


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